happened two weeks after their holiday and, with the season’s change, Alice felt a terror which she didn’t know how to articulate. Sooner or later she would have to stop going into Cartertown for pretend interviews and actually get a job. In just a few weeks it would be too cold to meet on Conniton Hill and the boarding house Tony lived in didn’t allow visitors. Their meetings would have to take place in pubs and cinemas, crowded with other people, and eventually he would lose interest and meet a girl who was less complicated and happy to introduce him to her parents.
By November it was as if the summer had never happened and Tony shivered in the wind. Alice felt him slipping from her with every meeting until one day, on Conniton Hill, he wouldn’t meet her eye and so she grabbed and thrashed with her conversation. ‘I wish we could meet more often,’ she said, longing for him to ask her to run away with him.
He lit a cigarette and she could see frown lines between his eyes. ‘It’s hard, what with your mother, my shitty room, no money, sodding life.’
‘But maybe it doesn’t have to be hard.’
Tony grunted. ‘Life’s always hard, Alice. Maybe not in your fairy tale castle, but for the rest of us it is.’ His voice sounded gruff and something curdled in her stomach.
Besides, the insult had stung her and she felt tears popping at the side of her eyes, which she wiped furiously away. Somehow, somewhere, she’d always known that it could end this way and everything about the fact that she would die without him gave her courage. ‘Come on,’ she said, pulling him up and leading him into one of the many thickets on the east side of the hill. Once there she started to take off her clothes, pulling at his, standing on tiptoe to reach his mouth.
‘Steady on!’ Tony laughed. ‘What’s got into you?’ But Alice didn’t answer, kneeling before him instead and taking him into her mouth, feeling him harden against her tongue. ‘Fuck,’ he said from somewhere above her. Now she pulled him down so that he was on top of her, panting with the same desire that she felt. ‘Wait a second,’ he moaned, fishing a condom out of his pocket and every second that he wasn’t inside her was too long so she pushed her hips towards him. But once he was she found that nothing was enough, he could not get far enough inside her so that she was almost crying with rage at the inadequacy of the human body’s inability to turn itself inside out. She sucked him into her, pulling all of him, wanting part of him inside her for ever.
He came with a cry. ‘Fuck,’ he shouted, ‘fuck, where did you learn to do that?’ But he was laughing as well as he rolled off. He sat up and then he said it again and this time the word sounded different. Alice sat up and saw the condom shredded in his hands.
4 … Trying
I know I’m not perfect, my goodness no one needs tell me that. But I have tried my best, really I have, and yet all the evidence would suggest that I’ve failed pretty spectacularly. She should have told her years ago; in fact it never should have been something that needed telling, it should have simply been part of her knowledge, like the fact that I like marmalade for breakfast or that summer comes after spring. But I have known for years that my daughter is not going to; she’s not going to do anything much more than function. I don’t really blame her; I don’t think I gave her much of a start in life or much to hang on to in the way of understanding about love and relationships. In my defence I would say I found it very hard after Howie died to be properly present in anything, which I do realise is a poor excuse, but is at least true. I know she hates me and thinks I’m ridiculous and stuffy and maybe she’s right, but I do care, if only I could find the right words.
I decided to tell Dot this morning because it’s her fourteenth birthday today. I don’t know why it suddenly seems the right thing to do, but I think she’s started wondering about things like who you are and where you’re from and I don’t want her to waste time wondering about things that should be obvious. Goodness, we all have a hard enough time working the rest out, we don’t need to start off on a losing foot. I sat on my bed, dressed and ready, waiting to hear her get up. When I heard her on the stairs I opened my door and asked her to come in for a minute. Of course she was surprised enough by this request not to question me. I know they both think I’m ridiculous about my things, but I have to keep them safe. Possessions are not just materials stuck together to make something, they hold time in their structure, meaning in their make-up. We are the guardians of their knowledge and without them we might as well all crumple up and accept the dust swirling around our feet. I appreciate this is an outdated concept in our disposable society, but I don’t see life getting any easier by virtue of the fact that we can throw everything away. And besides, when you understand all of this, you realise that you are only a guardian in life, which somehow makes things easier, or at least it has for me. What you do and how you behave matters because that is what carries our history, we are what makes up the human race and that is a responsibility worth taking seriously.
Dot looked out of place in my room in her jeans and T-shirt, her hair tangled, so I smiled to put her at ease.
‘Sit down,’ I said, but then she went to my bed and was about to sit on the lace and I had to shout at her to stop and so we got off on the wrong foot. It’s just that the lace was my mother’s veil on her wedding day and her mother’s before that and mine. I had hoped it would one day be Alice’s but I think we all know that’s never going to happen. So I’m keeping it for Dot, although chances are she’ll never wear it either, even if she does get married.
I didn’t know how to begin and so I launched straight in. ‘It really should be your mother who tells you about all of this, but I can’t see a day when she might and so I’m going to.’ I hoped Dot understands that she must not repeat this conversation to Alice, she certainly nodded in a very serious way that made me want to sit next to her and soften the blow with a steady arm around her shoulders. But we are all made a certain way and I am too old to break my mould. ‘Your father ran off with another woman, plain and simple.’ I regretted the use of the words ‘plain and simple’ as they left my mouth, but I sat as still as I could, only allowing myself to adjust the brooch which always sits at my neck.
Dot looked at me for a while, her little face crumpling with the effort it was taking to absorb the information. ‘Who,’ she said finally.
‘A woman called Silver Sharpe. She was the barmaid at the Hare and Hounds for a while. Frightfully common.’
‘But …’ She needed me to help her but my mind felt as if someone had whitewashed it. ‘But why?’
I shrugged and then I said something stupid like, ‘Men are very flighty, they pretty much always let you down.’
‘Really?’ asked Dot. ‘Grandpa didn’t.’
‘Well, I suppose he did. If he hadn’t been stupid enough to go out in that storm he wouldn’t have been hit by the boom and, well …’ I knew I had to stop even as I was saying the words because a strange rage was building in my chest when I hadn’t even known that I was angry. ‘Anyway, Dot, this isn’t about Grandpa. I wanted you to know that your father left and there’s no point fretting about him.’
‘Did he love me?’ she asked and the question was heartbreaking. I wish conversations were easier; I wish they were set in stone and there were rules and manners we had to follow like in the old days. I wish they didn’t lead you into so many dangerous moments that make you want to run screaming in the other direction.
‘Oh goodness, Dot, he certainly did. I used to watch him with you and he was always so proud. He used to carry you round the village on his shoulders.’ At least I hope I said that – I’m sure I did.
‘So why did he leave then?’
And that is a question I’ve often asked myself because I am not lying, he really did adore her. But by God it must have been hard to live with Alice. By the end I wanted to shake her myself. She was so bloody passive with him, so locked into her own world that it wasn’t any wonder he looked for something elsewhere. Although I couldn’t say any of that to Dot, so had to make do with a cop out along the lines of, ‘I don’t know. Really I